Alpha Xander's Undoing Chasing my Unknown Mate Back novel Chapter 81

Chapter 81

*Rory*

“Rory,” Xander said, his voice landing clean and close. “Look at me.”

“I am,” I said, though my eyes kept flicking to the ring, to the small light that had begun to gather under my heel like it was tasting the shape of my foot.

“Stay with me,” he said again. “Here. Right here.”

Zerina pressed against my ribs. ‘We do not run from chalk,’ she said. She sounded calmer than me. It helped,

I drew breath. I gave the circle another small truth, then another. The tug eased, then jerked hard like a fish on a line, and then there was a voice in my head that I didn’t recognize right away.

‘Pull your breath into three. On the third, knot it behind your heart.’

Vallin.

His voice slid into my head like a needle under a fingernail. No time to look for him, no time to ask how. The mindlink carried the taste of iron and ink.

He must’ve built it with some subtle rune cut while we were looking the other way. I should have been furious. Another part of me was grateful. A third part didn’t have room for either.

“Get out of my head,” Xander snapped, and I heard it twice: in the air and in the link. He’d felt the stitch, too.

‘You do not have the luxury of choice,’ Vallin said, unbothered. ‘You want her alive, Alpha? Then shut up and count with her.’

“Rory, don’t-” Xander started.

“Tell me,” I said, because the tilt was picking up, because the fire was crawling higher on my skin.

“Three breaths,’ he said. ‘On the third, drop your guard.’

‘Are you crazy!’ Xander bellowed. ‘You’re trying to get her killed. How the hell is she supposed to drop her guard?’

‘Not down,’ Vallin retorted. ‘In.’

Like hell I knew what that meant, but time wasn’t on my side. I could feel the ring pulling me since I dropped my guard earlier. Now he was saying I should drop it again? But in?

Vallin’s voice was quick, clipped. ‘Find your wolf at the edge-between soul and body. There is a room there. Close the door to the circle. Leave the window open to the bond. Then you’ll cut your power off.”

“That’s not how-‘ Xander said.

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Chapter 81

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‘You trained her to survive a test. I am training her to survive a killing,’ Vallin bit off. ‘Rory, you have one chance. If you succeed, you and your wolf lives. If you fail, wither you both die at the council’s hand, or you shut the door and window and lose your wolf forever. You must concentrate. So breathe.

And I did. As terrified and uncertain as I was, I did.

I breathed. One. Two. On the third, I reached.

Not up, not out-but in. Behind my heart. Zerina met me where the bone felt thin.

I felt her, as a blur of power and as a shape. She pressed into me, into that small room. I closed the door on the circle the way you shut a door against wind. I left the window open to Xander and Zerina. The bond hummed in the frame.

The pull eased, and a wash of relief went through me so strong my knees buckled and the ring snapped at my ankles to keep me on my feet.

I hissed. The outer circle flared in response: a ribbon of water rose and folded itself into the air so perfectly it didn’t drip. A wind rune sang as a light breeze brushed through us. A pebble lifted a breath off the ground and hovered there, patient. And a small blaze lit around it all.

All four elements responded, but not in its full severity that would deem me gifted with one gift.

I should have held there and been satisfied. But I could feel the Council leaning forward. I could feel Durnham smiling like he’d found the corner of a seam and just needed to pull.

‘Now anchor,’ Vallin said. “Take the thin thread from your bond and loop it through the hinges of the door and window. But do not tie. If you tie, you will break.

I tried, though I didn’t understand what he meant. I took the thread of the bond I had with Zerina and wrapped it in the hinges as Vallin said. Then I held onto the thread I had with Xander and did the same-only because I had no idea what thread I was supposed to weave when they were both there-when they both anchored me so well.

“Don’t,” Xander said, a sharp slice of sound. “Rory-that’s too deep.”

He wasn’t wrong. I unwrapped them as fast as I did. Because the bond might sweat fire; the hinge might catch. And if they caught, we could fuse.

If we fused wrong, we wouldn’t come back.

Zerina’s muzzle brushed my mind, ‘We can do this,’ she said, and the steadiness in her voice broke something open inside me. ‘I am not prey.

I took the thread and looped it once. Twice.

For a heartbeat, the world balanced.

The four runes in the outer ring answered, one by one-air rippling banners, water beading on surfaces, dust shifting to a slow, contented tremor, a line of heat crawling along the stone. The center ring stayed cool. No drama, no fracture. I almost believed we had done it.

13:19 Wed, Sep 17

Chapter 81

Then everything tried to claim me at once.

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The bond surged. Vallin’s weave tugged. The circle’s measure jerked as if insulted by the window I’d left The hinge inside me shuddered. Something found the loop and yanked.

open.

It was like hearing three different names shouted in a crowd and turning to each one at the same time. Where does your body go? Which set of hands does it follow? I felt my self-my self-try to split into thirds to answer them all.

“Rory!” Xander’s voice cracked across the field.

The ring punished him for it; he bent forward, palms on his thighs, breath grinding as the measure pushed against a body it didn’t think belonged. He didn’t move away. He didn’t even look up.

I held my ground for one second, then another, and then the floor under me changed. Not the stone. The meaning.

The runes around our ring went from glow to glare. The truth runes began to move, as if new lines were being cut inside the old ones by a hand too fast to see.

By now everyone in the school except Xander and I would’ve satisfied the requirements of the Solstice, and were now lingering on the side-lines.

I caught Matt, Mona and Dharra looking on with worried glances.

Xander had yet to settle into a ring because he was so busy trying to balance me. And it was hurting him, yet he wouldn’t let go.

“Hold them!” someone shouted from the dais.

Varra took a step. Two wardens moved at once, each putting a hand just off her forearms without daring to touch. A warning.

“Stand down,” she said gently. They didn’t. Her eyes cut to mine. “Breathe, Aurora.”

I tried. But the breath snagged.

The runes around my feet screamed.

It wasn’t sound at first. It was pressure and tearing. Metal doesn’t make noise as it tears until the very last second-until the final fibers give and the whole thing peals like a bell.

I heard that bell now, inside bone. The ring’s chalk lines cracked down through the stone like ice breaking,

The first fracture shot from my heel to the edge of the field and the flame along the fire runes guttered. The second split the neutral band. The third cut through the air and made it shiver visibly, like heat above a road.

“Stop the flow!” someone from the Council barked. As if it were a faucet. As if any of them could reach whatever had just woken.

I felt like I was being torn from the inside out, and from the terrified look on everyone’s faces, including the

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